A/N 1: This story takes place thirty-seven years into the future when a young man is getting the chance to interview his favorite hero, one of our very own Winchesters. It's my own little spin on the how Sam and Dean's lives turned out.

A/N 2: I thought it was a cool idea to write an "Interview With A Vampire" type scenario. It's where I got the idea and thought it could work for one of the boys. It's a little lengthy, just to warn you.

"Interview With A Hunter"

Rick Garan walked into the dimly lit bar with his tape recorder in hand. He was a tall thin young man, hardly out of college and working on his first major assignment for Demon Hunters Magazine. How lucky he felt that his first real interview was going to be with a true legend, one of the best demon hunters of all time.

Rick sat down at the bar and began to scan the various faces. The room was only half full and eerily quiet. He did not see the man he was looking for, though Rick was so nervous that he had arrived a whole twenty minutes early. The editor of Demon Hunters Magazine had warned him that this particular hunter ran on his own schedule. The magazine had actually been trying for years to get an interview with this guy, but he always refused or never even showed up at all.

Someone walked through the door, and Rick picked up his head expectantly. It was a short, stocky man who was no older than forty. Rick sighed and ordered a soda from the bartender. He figured he probably shouldn't drink on the job, even though it was the aged hunter who had insisted they meet there.

The door opened again, but it was two women. Rick sighed and muttered under his breath, "He probably won't even show."

"Well, I could just leave then," a gruff voice said from behind him.

Rick turned around, and there he stood. He was the ultimate demon hunter and Rick's childhood hero. This man was the stuff of which legends were made. Hunters of present actually aspired to be him. Rick was simply amazed that he was getting to actually meet him live and in person.

"Oh wow," Rick breathed, taking the hand of the aged hunter in front of him. "I can't believe it's really you. It's a real honor to meet you, Mr. Winchester."

He simply chuckled, "Call me Dean, okay? None of this Mr. Winchester crap."

"Sure, Mr. – I mean, Dean," Rick said nervously. "Well, I guess we should get started."

"Sure thing," Dean said. He then called to the bartender, "Hey Tony, get me a beer. And keep 'em coming."

Dean led the way to a table at the very back of the bar and both sat down. Dean sat more slouched and comfortable while Rick sat up painfully straight. Tony arrived with Dean's beer, and he took a long pull from the bottle before glaring expectantly at the lanky kid sitting across from him.

Rick studied the hunter thoroughly. He had to be in his sixties at least. His hair was cut short and completely dark gray in color. His face was weathered and etched with deep lines, mostly around his eyes and mouth. There was a light stubble on his face that was gray as well. His eyes were sad and weary. Actually, his whole body looked tired and worn down. He was wearing a very old brown leather jacket despite the heat that still lingered from summer.

"Are you gonna ask me some questions kid, or are you just gonna stare at me all day?"

Rick jumped and felt the heat climb up his neck and into his face. "Uh, sorry about that," he muttered sounding terribly embarrassed. "I don't mean to be such a geek about this. It's just that, I've heard so many stories about you my whole life. Now you're right here, sitting in front of me. And I get to interview you, which was my biggest dream ever since I decided to go into journalism."

Dean smiled, "You're biggest wish was to become a writer and interview me? I find that hard to believe."

"Oh yeah," Rick said excitedly. "I mean, you're a legend among the entire hunting community. You and your whole family are practically in the Demon Hunter's Hall of Fame. Well, you would be if there actually was one."

Dean wasn't exactly sure how to respond to that, so he simply took another sip of his beer. He never really considered himself as a hero and thought it odd of anyone who would.

Rick put his tape recorder, notepad, and pencil on the table in front of him. But before he could even ask his first question, the hunter grabbed the tape recorder and inspected it closely.

"Wow, I didn't even know these things were still around. These days everything is so high-tech and confusing."

"It was my grandfather's," Rick said somewhat proudly. "He was a journalist too. I guess I just like the old school way of doing things."

Dean nodded as Rick's pencil rolled off the table and landed on the floor. "Damn," Rick muttered as he bent over in his chair to pick it up. Once he was sitting back up, Dean was holding out the tape recorder to him.

"Already pressed record for you."

Rick took it and set it on the table between them. "So," Rick stared with a small quiver in his voice. "Why did you even agree to this interview? You're almost as famous for skipping out on them as you are for your hunting skills."

Dean chuckled softly. "You know, I have no idea. That magazine has been around for fifteen years, and it's been fifteen years you guys have been hounding me for an interview. I guess I finally decided to stop being such a tease."

Rick laughed and settled more comfortably in his chair. "I appreciate you picking this time to actually show up, seeing as I'm the one giving the interview."

"Well, I saw you and decided you didn't look like a complete idiot, unlike those other guys they've sent here over the years."

"I guess I'll take that as a compliment," Rick smiled. "So how does it feel to be one of the most recognized and notorious hunters of our time?"

Dean smiled and shook his head. "It feels tiring to be honest. I've been doing this job for a long time, practically my whole life. It amazes me to hear kids say they want to follow in my footsteps. If they only knew hard the life can really get. I really don't see myself being someone people should look up to."

Rick sat forward in his chair. "Are you kidding me? My older brother and I idolized you. My dad and uncle would tell us stories about you and your brother, Sam. We just thought you were the best hunter ever."

Dean wasn't accustomed to hearing such praise, so he changed the subject. "How did you hear all these stories about me anyway?"

"My uncle's a hunter," Rick explained. "My cousin is too, but . . ."

"So why aren't you?"

Rick simply shook his head. "I see what you're trying to do, and it isn't going to work. This interview is supposed to be about you – "

"Come on," Dean interrupted. "We're friends now right? Let's not think of this so much as an interview and more like friendly conversation."

Rick sighed, "Well, I've always been tall and gangly with absolutely no coordination. I'm not a very good shot either. So when that dream didn't work out, I choose to become a writer instead. Now I've got the chance to interview all of my heroes, like I am right now."

Dean smiled and drained the rest of his beer. "Kid, you throw around the word hero a little too loosely."

"And why do you say that?"

Dean sighed, "Because we're all basically criminals. Running credit card scams and hustling pool to get by. Using fake Ids and pretending to be government officials to get into places for authorized personnel only. Digging up graves, burning corpses, breaking and entering . . . I could go on and on."

"But you saved lives though," Rick argued.

"Yeah," Dean agreed. "We did do that."

Tony the bartender brought Dean another beer, but Rick waited until he was gone before asking another question.

"So you didn't have any hunting heroes growing up?"

"I didn't know very many," Dean admitted. "My dad kept Sam and I pretty much in the dark about that kind of stuff."

"And your dad John, he pretty much raised you both to be hunters?"

"Yeah," Dean replied gruffly. It had been thirty-seven years since his father's death, and he still found it difficult to talk about him sometimes.

"So how did that happen exactly?" Rick asked with great interest.

"Jeez kid, why don't you just ask me for my whole life story? Don't you know this one?"

"I know the basics," Rick admitted. "But that's not the same as coming straight from you with the real story."

Dean took another long pull from his beer as he decided how truthful he would be. There were some things that only he and Sam knew about, and it was going to stay that way.

"Well, when I was four and Sammy was six months old, the yellow-eyed demon showed up at our home in Lawrence."

"Kansas?" Rick asked while scribbling on his notepad.

"Yeah. So he goes into my brother's nursery, and naturally when Sam starts to cry our mom goes in to check on him. That's when that yellow-eyed son of a bitch pinned her to the ceiling. He sliced open her stomach and set her on fire. My dad grabbed Sammy out of his crib and handed him to me. I carried Sam out the front door. My dad tried to save her, but it was too late. She was burned within seconds."

"Wow," Rick said, completely enamored in the story. "Did you ever find out why the demon killed your mother in the first place?"

"Nope," Dean lied. He had honestly learned the truth many years before, but he was taking that secret with him to the grave.

"So then what?"

"After my mom was gone, my dad saw evil everywhere. So he started researching about things he never even believed in before. He wanted to find the thing that killed my mom and get revenge for what it had done to our family. We moved around a lot too. We spent twenty-three years looking for that damn thing, and we killed any evil thing we could find in between."

"And you're the one that killed it," Rick said in awe. "You're the one that finally ended it."

"Yeah," Dean sighed. "But who knew that it was going to get so much worse?"

This was the really painful part. He knew the interview would find its way there; it was unavoidable. Dean swallowed half of his beer and silently debated leaving.

"So the demon war," Rick said cautiously. "What was that like?"

"Like hell on earth," Dean muttered without a trace of humor in his voice.

Rick waited patiently for him to continue.

"It was a difficult couple of years, that's for sure," Dean finally supplied. "We lost a lot of good people along the way, hunters and everyone else. Death was pretty much everywhere. It was a scary time then."

Rick noticed the green eyes become vacant as the hunter recalled all the pains from his past. He looked so much older and smaller in that moment, and Rick was reminded that he was simply looking at a human being, and not some glorified superhero.

Dean cleared his throat and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I don't really like to talk about it much." He hated how as he got older, his emotions seemed to take a stronger hold on him. It wasn't something he liked very much.

"I understand," Rick said quietly. "But what about after the war? The hunting community was forced out into the open and exposed. The things you hunt aren't urban legends and ghost stories anymore. The mass possessions and death occurring everywhere was enough to show people that there really were things out there in the dark. And that people like you were the ones who were fighting to save everyone."

"Yeah," Dean lamely supplied.

"You and the other hunters that were involved in the demon war, you all got medals correct? That had to feel good to finally be recognized for everything that you did."

Dean shook his head. This kid just didn't understand. "I didn't want or need the medals. They would have just been this daily reminder of all the people that we lost, of the ones we couldn't save. I don't even have the medals anymore."

"You don't?" Rick asked, clearly bewildered. He felt that if he ever did anything to deserve a medal, he would display it proudly.

"No, I sold them for guns and ammo. You wouldn't believe the amount I got for them," Dean laughed.

Rick honestly did not know what to say to that. He cleared his throat loudly and moved on to the next question. "So can I ask you about a rumor I heard? You can tell me if it's true."

"Shoot."

"I read somewhere that you sold your soul to save your brother's life. Is that true?"

There was another question that was like a swift kick to the gut. Dean tried not to think about that day. The day he had failed to protect his little brother. The memory of Sam dying in his arms brought on a whole new wave of pain, even after all those years. But as painful as it was, Dean was prepared for that particular question.

"I'm still here aren't I?" Dean said, smiling so big his eyes crinkled in the corners. "Can you believe the shit people print these days?"

Rick laughed skeptically, not fully sure if he should believe him or not. "But from what I've heard, you and Sam were really close. That you two would've done anything for each other."

"And we would have."

Dean pictured his little brother as he was now. He looked a lot different than he had when he was twenty-three. His hair had thinned out on top, and he wore glasses when he read. He wasn't nearly as fit as he used to be either, but Sam blamed that on Angie's home-cooked meals. He was normal and happy, which is all Sam ever really wanted.

"Whatever happened to him?" Rick wondered.

This made Dean laugh. "I guess we should get Sammy on a 'Where Are They Now: Demon Hunters Edition'."

Rick laughed right along with him. "Seriously, he just disappeared. What's he doing now?"

Dean's laughter trailed off. "We traveled together for ten years. Even after the war was over, and after we finally got the FBI off our backs. We just kept hunting, you know? Then one day we ran into a Wendigo. God, it had been a long time since we had run into one of those. Anyway, it gets a hold of Sam, and I shoot the damn thing to get him loose. But the damage was already done."

"He's not dead?!" Rick asked in alarm and true concern.

"Of course not," Dean smiled. "It nearly ripped his leg off though. He lost a lot of blood too. After that he could hardly walk, much less run anymore. He's still got a limp."

"So that's why he quit?"

"Nah," Dean said as he finished off his second beer. Tony brought him another. "Truth is, he wanted to be gone a long time before that. He just stuck around for me."

"So he just lives a completely normal life?" Rick asked amazed.

"Yep," Dean said. "And wouldn't you know it, he married his physical therapist. I didn't think shit like that really happened. I was just glad to see him finally move on. It was pretty touch and go there for a while. I didn't think he'd ever get over Jessica."

"His girlfriend that died, right?"

"Yeah," Dean answered. "I still talk to Sam every now and then. I actually try to get him to hit the road with me every once in a while. He has yet to take me up on the offer. Anyway, he actually went back to law school. He's got three grown kids, two sons and a daughter. And they're even starting to have their own kids. Now he's retired and sittin' pretty."

"And you never wanted that?"

Dean needed a moment to think about that one. "Yeah, at one time I did. Sometimes I thought it would be great to have a family and a home to go to every night. I thought maybe I could quit hunting all together and just be normal for a while. But in the end, it just wasn't for me."

"How do you mean?" Rick asked curiously.

"Well, I've got two kids," Dean said. "And I've been married once before."

"Really?!" Rick said as he wrote furiously on his pad of paper. "Why didn't I know this?"

"I tried to keep my private life private. I never knew what might go after my family. I had to keep them safe."

"But surely you could tell me now."

"What is this, some cheesy gossip rag?" Dean laughed.

"Come on," Rick urged. "Readers would be surprised to hear this."

"Fine," Dean sighed. "So the first woman was Anna, but we never got married. She was like some 21st century hippie chick that said she didn't believe in marriage. And she honestly didn't mind the fact that I was a hunter. Maybe that's why we got along so well."

"So what happened?"

"What happened was she got pregnant with our daughter, Shayna. Now I've been through some scary stuff, but almost nothing scared me more than becoming a father. Especially being a father to a little girl."

"Were you one of those protective types?" Rick asked with a smile.

"Overprotective doesn't even begin to describe it. When some punk showed up to pick Shay up for a date, I had my shotgun loaded and I was waiting for him on the porch. And I slipped holy water in his soda too."

"Why?"

"To see if he was possessed, of course," Dean replied, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Riiight, so then what?"

"Anna and I ended things, but we're still really good friends. But I guess that afterwards I went through this phase where I thought Sam had the right idea, you know? I actually quit hunting for a while and got a job at a garage. I guess I was just tired of it all. Then I meet Kellie and eventually we got married. Yeah, Iactually got married which is something I never thought would happen. We had a son too. We named him Johnny after both of our fathers. But the normal life wasn't really what I wanted, and after a while I missed the hunt. She asked me to go, neither of us were happy."

"Any regrets?" Rick asked carefully.

"Certainly not either of my kids," Dean answered automatically. "But I missed a lot. And I hurt Kellie, which is something I'm not proud of. She got married again though, I think she's happy now."

Dean was quiet, remorse and sadness showing in his eyes. He took a long drink from the bottle in his hand as he remembered all the things he had missed. Like when Shay had gotten the lead in the school play and he promised her he would be there opening night. If only he hadn't gotten sidetracked by that poltergeist. Or the time Johnny's football team made it to the state championships, but Dean had missed it because another vampire needed beheading. He knew he had to remember all the really important times he had been there. He had wanted to be a great father, not an absent one. Dean also knew that his own father hadn't been perfect, but he did the best he could. Dean had only done the best he could too.

"Did either of your kids start hunting?"

Dean's eyes lit up again. It was obvious he enjoyed talking about his children. "No, I never told Kellie the truth about what I did because I thought I was done with that life. Johnny never knew because of it. But sometimes I would take Shay for the whole summer, and we'd go hunting. She was an excellent shot," he added with pride in his eyes. "I was just too worried about her to let her keep at it."

"But you have," Rick said, tapping his pencil on the table excitedly. "After all these years you're still out there, saving people and hunting things."

"Times have changed," Dean said wearily. "Hunting isn't what it used to be."

The pencil stopped. "How do you mean?"

Dean studied the young man sitting across from him. "How old are you kid?"

"Twenty-two."

Dean pushed past the irony of that number. "Well, you weren't even born yet, were you? When I was around your age things were very different. We weren't being paid like so many are now, and hunting wasn't an actual job that people could claim proudly. Nobody cared about who was getting more news coverage, or the cover of a magazine."

Rick put down his pencil.

"We just drove from town to town doing our jobs and trying to fly under the radar. It's not like we ever wanted to be paid or thanked; I wouldn't go that far. But becoming a hunter now is thought to be some kind of glamorous job now. And it's not; it's hard work that takes skill and brains. Why do you think we lose so many new hunters all the time? To be honest, I don't even know how I'm still alive right now."

Rick wasn't sure how to respond. He felt like he had been one of those people just two hours earlier. He thought that hunting was just about saving the day and playing hero. He never realized how much hunters really sacrificed in their own lives to help other people, and just how demanding and ruthless the job could be. A couple of hours talking to his childhood hero had him seeing things in a whole new light.

"One more question, and then I'll let you go –"

"Oh thank God," Dean interrupted with a laugh. "My ass is killing me."

Rick smiled, then said in a hushed voice as if it were too horrible of a thing to even ask. "Will you ever quit hunting?"

Dean chuckled again. "I guess I'll have to quit when I'm too old to see what I'm shooting at, or when I can't move anymore. I wouldn't want to break a hip or anything."

Rick laughed, but what Dean said next made him stop abruptly.

"But that's not the way I would want to go."

"Then how would you want to go?"

Dean grinned widely, giving Rick a glimpse of the younger man he had been. "I'd want to go out fighting."

Rick smiled back. Without taking his eyes off the hunter, he reached out for the recorder sitting between them and stopped the tape.

Rick shook the rough, large hand of Dean Winchester, and thanked him immensely for doing the interview. Dean said that he was happy to do it, and he then left the bar. Rick watched out of the window as Dean sped away in his black '67 Chevy Impala, which was just as legendary as its owner. How that car was even still running, Rick could never figure out.

After simply sitting at the table for twenty minutes still in complete shock, Rick finally stood up from the table to leave. He had actually met Dean Winchester, and he wasn't at all how he had expected the hunter would be. But that was okay, considering Dean had turned out to be so much more than he could have imagined.

It was almost dark as Rick drove away from the bar. He put the top down on his car and let the warm night air blow past him. He reached for the small tape recorder sitting on his front seat. He already wanted to listen to it again. It wasn't until after Dean had left that he realized that he hadn't taken very many notes at all. That didn't matter because the tape had the gold.

But where was the tape? Rick opened the recorder, and the tape was simply gone. He went into full panic mode, looking around frantically. His car swerved dangerously on the road, and he pulled over so he could search more thoroughly.

After nearly ten minutes of rummaging through his car with no results, Rick decided he should go back to the bar and see if he had left it there. He got back behind the wheel and was about to make a U-turn when it finally hit him. And all he could do was laugh.

Dean had taken the tape! He had taken it before the interview had even began. Rick should have had known the old man still had a few tricks up his sleeve, he was the infamous Dean Winchester after all.

Rick knew he should be pissed. The interview was due on Monday, and he had nothing but a few scribbles on his notepad. But Rick couldn't stay angry. If Dean Winchester chose to stay a mystery, then that was how he would stay.

A/N 3: I actually debated with myself for even sharing this one, I'm not really sure why, haha. And Dean's "What is this, some cheesy gossip rag?" was actually a line poking fun at myself, but I figured if I was going to write about Dean's life you guys would want to know ALL the details. And of course, I hope you all enjoyed it. :)